Who won the debate and will it matter on Election Day

Where tonight we will not make a single joke about  cats or dogs because we are a serious show about   the one serious business of a serious city.  I'm so old that I can remember a time when you   can get through an entire presidential campaign  without without once hearing about immigrant cat   eating or the relative death dealing qualities  of sharks and boat batteries or windmills and   their relationship to bacon shortages.  I'm not complaining, I'm just observing. Tonight, we'll talk about Tuesday's  debate and how Kamala Harris exceeded expectations and how Donald  Trump ended the week by saying essentially not going to do that  again. We're 53D's out from the election, and I'll discuss the state  of the race with Ashley Parker, the senior national political  correspondent for The Washington Post. Eugene Daniels, a White House  correspondent for Politico and co-author of Playbook. Jerusalem Demsas, my  colleague and a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of the  new book on the housing crisis. And Asma Khalid, NPR's White House  correspondent and an ABC News political contributor. Thank you  for joining me, eventful week, no cats, no dogs. I, I'm serious about  it. I'm trying to, and I'm saying that to myself obviously. um Jerusalem, let me start with you.  This is a fact insufficiently known in Washington as far as I'm  concerned, but you were voted Speaker of the Year for the American  parliamentary Debate Association as a college debater, which meant that  you were the best college debater in America. Um, so you're the  expert, you have the floor. Tell us what we saw Tuesday. Night.  Tell us what we not just what we heard, but tell us what we saw.  Well, you definitely didn't see a college debate on Tuesday  night, so the level was too low, it's funny, I mean when you're in  college debate, you like to think that most of what's happening is  are your arguments winning, but there's this um you know element  that you realize, especially as you start getting good later and  you know, college career that a lot of it also has to do with how  people are perceiving you and you can see that, you know, vice presidential Vice President Kamala Harris really  knew that she was really trying to get in her skin. She's using  her facial expressions to inspire a level of ridicule in the audience and  from the, you know, the metaphorical judges, the voters, um, that there  was something ridiculous about him without having to respond to  specific arguments, she was able to inspire a sense that you know  you don't have to respond to the cats and dogs. All you can say is,  what is there to say to this other than we're going to move on now  how important that is in the long term? Who knows? Obviously it's the  case that both the Trump campaign and the Harris campaign felt like  they won that night and in the long term what will matter is the  fact that he wasn't able to answer whether or not he would veto a  national abortion ban, what he said about Ukraine, but at the same  time it's clear that when it comes to how people feel about that night  and the days after they really feel like she did a good job. Ashley, did did does Donald Trump and Donald  Trump's team actually think that he won? Donald Trump's team  absolutely does not think that he won um Donald Trump has insisted that  he believes that he won and he has that ability to convince himself  of certain untruths, so that's more of an open question, but from  your reporting there's no doubt that the Trump people know that  that was not a great, no, and that's that's what you saw midway through  the debate them starting to attack the moderators, them starting to  attack ABC them saying look it's him debating three other people.  That's not the messaging or the spin of a dominant. Candidate out  there, right, right, right, um, Eugene, does it matter? I mean,  yes and no, right? At the end of the day, Vice President Harris  had to perform. Her team knew that there was more pressure on her  than Donald Trump. Donald Trump has done the most presidential debates  of any presidential candidate in history, both primary and 7  general election debates, um, and so she had to kind of step up one  and show people that she had a command of the issue. Um, she had  to and poke and prod him. I think better than any of the people he's  ever debated, right, getting underneath his skin, I think from the very  first moment when she like walked over behind his lectern to shake  his hand, making very clear, as we called it said in playbook this  week um I can the alpha female of all, right, like making it very  clear it wasn't he wasn't expecting that. I don't think he liked it  either, um, and so, um, if whether voters actually care How they did  on the debate stage. It was about making sure that she got up there  and did better than people wanted and thought she was going to do. Asma,  I want you to comment on something that I want to play for you all.  Um, it's a moment from the debate that really gets at the heart of  the challenge that Kamala Harris poses to Donald Trump. Let's  listen. It's important to remind the former president you're not running  against Joe Biden, you're running against me. I believe the reason  that Donald Trump says that this war would be over within 24 hours  is because he would just give it up. And that's not who we are as Americans. The thing that he hasn't been  able to do in the last month or so is a just his. View or or or or become  accustomed to the reality that he's running against this 60 year old,  very sharp. African American slash South Asian woman, not. Ancient  Joe Biden, which was the target in the long lead up to this  moment. Um, why is he not? Showing a a learning curve here?  I would say a couple of reasons. One is that he had not anticipated  this change to happen, right? You heard for weeks after it  happened, this sort of nostalgia for Bayn he was cheated out of the  race. It's the kindest messages I think we heard from Trump about  Biden in many years, but also I would say, I mean the reality is that  that what we saw on the debate stage to me was that you know Trump's  central message for much of this campaign cycle was one major thesis, and that was  that Joe Biden. His opponent was too old. Um, that argument has  gone out the window now that he's running against a woman who is  nearly 20 years younger than him. She has suddenly become sort of  physically the change candidate. I mean her campaign talks about a  new way forward. I would make the argument that not very many of her  policies are actually different than Biden, right? I mean, Republicans  have tried, I would say Trump didn't do it that well during the  debate because he was rambling, but they have tried to tether her  to Biden and whether it was on, you know, Ukraine support for  Ukraine, whether it was on the war in the Middle East, whether it was on the immigration pretty much to a tee  most of her policies echo President Biden's, but she is physically  manifesting change and a new way forward and and Trump's campaign wanted him  to do that on stage, but instead he said that um Joe Biden hates  her. He can't stand her. So we were supposed to tie Kamala Harris and  Joe Biden together and what he did was draw even further for  voters, um, a a line between the two. It's so interesting. I mean, as  I'm watching it. And I'm familiar with some of Trump's trigger words.  It seems as if, oh, it almost is like somebody asked Chat GPT,  give us a list of 20 words that always trigger and you had, I mean, from crowd  size to the the the the the words that he cannot stand to hear, John  McCain with the thumbs down hand gesture and also more subtly  mentioning Wharton that he has a lot of pride in to rebut his economic  argument. I mean, those Easter eggs were both subtle and very  blatant. So, so, so, so the goal was, was to psychologically undo him  and I'm fascinated by the internal Trump campaign dynamic where they  obviously had to anticipate that people advising him that she would  try this, and they probably told him, but. It doesn't seem Jerusalem  that it's like at the end, you know, when he was doing his closing  remarks, it's almost like he came back to himself and he  remembered the message to be getting. It's the first time you really  hear him make the claim that, you know, that she that she's going  to be a continuation of Biden that you know if she wanted to do all  these great things she's talking about that why didn't she do it  in the last 3.5 years and it was almost like you saw him re-entering  his body after being pushed to, you know, his, you know, trigger  points on all of these different topics, so you know, I do think that  it was a where he was not expecting to be rattled by her and was clearly  underestimated. One thing that was also striking to me is if you  listen to Trump rallies, he's not been shy about saying Kamala  Harris's name. I would argue he often mispronounces it, calls her Kamala.  I mean he mispronounced it a whole host of ways, but during the  debate, I don't believe we ever heard him once utter her name, which  was just striking to me because Harris repeatedly did, you know,  talk about, talk talk to Trump by name. He just never spoke or something  about the way he speaks about her publicly and has been reported  privately is he's very dismissive of her. He, he has said he doesn't  believe she's smart and so there's something also about someone who he  views as somehow other and beneath him. I mean he's made that very  clear. I wonder if he feels that way anymore. going up against him  toe to toe and getting under his he underestimated the adversary  is what you think. I mean that's underestimates kind of an Occam's  razor thing. That's the most obvious conclusion we could draw that he  Just went in there thinking that what what is and then and then could  not maintain the self-discipline that his aides had tried to prep  him for for 90 minutes because he was so frustrated that this woman  who he did not believe is on the level of him was getting the better  of him time and time again the way that he's interacted with women,  whether they be women politicians or women reporters, the ones that  kind of catch the worst from him are often black women and women of  color who are reporters especially when you think. About people like  April Ryan, people, uh, my one of my predecessors, Yamish like,  right, like the way that he spoke to them was different than the way  that he definitely how he spoke to men, but def and also how he  spoke to white women and you saw that on stage he he often does not  think that black women or women of color, it seems, um, can rise  to the same level as him and if you think that way, watching someone  do that and actually get under your skin and have a strategy that  in poking at little things that bother you that That is going to  come out and there's an irony to it too because he thinks he's such  a populist, right? And there's a level that like you said, he's  so proud of being a Wharton, this Ivy League school and Kala Harris  is someone who did not attend an Ivy League school. She feels she  doesn't have the academic credentials, the intellectual credentials to  stand up next to him and then when she's able to get under his skin,  and I think it's even more shocking to his senses. Yeah, no, I, I is  this that's an interesting point. I, I'm trying to understand the  reason that he didn't look at her. Yeah I know I wonder if it goes to  something that Eugene is talking about or if it goes to a strategy  of, I mean, she was directly right after and, and, and it can be interpreted  as fear, it could be interpreted as contempt. It could be interpreted  as just a, I'm going to look at the audience the whole time and  I don't care about her. I don't know what or I'm not gonna look at  her cause I might get too pissed off and make a face that might turn  off the the white suburban women assumes a level of discipline. No, no. Yeah, the only discipline in his approach  and obviously, you know, I'm just imagining, and there's a little  reporting around, but I'm just imagining that there's uh that  there is, you know, she's going to try to get under your skin. She's  gonna try to get under your skin and you know, obviously for Kamala  Harris, they did endless prep and real debate prep because  traditional debate he does not do that, right? He talks about it as like  going out and talking to the people and doing his rallies is the way  that he does debate prep. That did not work. She did actually. Should  there be prep where um a former Hillary Clinton aide Philip Philip  Ryans, who played Donald Trump for Hillary Clinton, did the exact  same thing for her, where they sat across said, you know, near  each other and had an actual debate, and Philippe, those we, we know him  from years of covering. Philippe is a person, um, I'll put this  diplomatically, he doesn't mind getting under your skin when it's when,  when it's appropriate to the, to the moment from his perspective,  yeah, yeah, yeah, he probably, he didn't leave character actually. They say